Pro-defense Senator Baker had launched his bid for the presidency just as national defense had become America’s sole political issue. By the end of the week before China seized Cape Verde and the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa — the second milestone along their road to America — Bill’s campaign had raised seventeen million dollars mainly from conservative political action committees and large defense contractors. By the end of the week that followed, his total campaign contributions had doubled, with the average size of the donations made that last week being $34.50. With Chinese bases in the Eastern Atlantic, Bill’s political bandwagon had quickly filled.
Bill’s mentor had, unusually, come from the other side of Capitol Hill. The venerable Tom Leffler, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives from Georgia, had years before taken a liking to the freshman senator from California. Perhaps it was because Bill, a polished former Hollywood actor, was so unlike Tom, a crusty, old-style, joke-telling, rib-eating Southern politician. Perhaps it was because Tom’s wife, Beth Leffler — who, Bill thought privately, was the key to Tom’s success — had taken the measure of Bill early on and seen the same potential in him that she had seen in Tom forty years earlier. Regardless of the reason, Tom and Beth Leffler had taken social charge of the divorced Bill, frequently escorting him to the right lunches, dinner parties, golf outings, and party retreats and caucuses. With their nurturing, Bill’s career had flourished. And in the fateful year of Bill’s attempted leap from junior senator to the nation’s highest office, events had broken just right for Bill, but just wrong for the beleaguered West.
All in Europe had watched the prodigious Chinese sealift surpass previous herculean American logistical records. Half-million-ton transports had deposited three million men on the islands that constituted China’s strategically important Atlantic foothold. All awaited the seemingly inevitable Chinese invasion of Europe with equal measures of incredulity and dread.
By the time of the Iowa caucuses, Congress had sought political cover behind massive defense appropriations. The studies of the blue ribbon panels had all come in, and the largest single line item in the history of the budget had been one hundred billion dollars for construction of three awesome new arsenal ships. The flat-decked, 500,000–ton behemoths wouldn’t cruelly hurl manned aircraft into the teeth of enemy air defenses. Instead, each arsenal ship could launch huge, long-range guided missiles at the rate of eight thousand every six minutes. Armored, flush-mounted vertical launch boxes would cover nearly every square meter of her decks. Auto-reloaders and robotic maintenance reduced the crew of the ship to only one hundred men and women — mostly officers. The commander would watch the battle from cameras mounted in the nose cones of missiles inbound for their targets in the air, on land, and on and below the surface of the sea. As a candidate, Bill had watched the impressive computer depictions of the attack from the full-size simulator used to train the captain and crew of a ship whose keel had just been laid. It would be an overwhelming barrage of ever-homing images. Even though, as a pro-defense senator, Baker had loudly championed the ships, his refrain in the debates had been, “Too little, too late!” A frightened electorate had turned out to vote in droves, and Bill had won primary after primary through the spring.
The EU had dispatched a million-man expeditionary army to their southern flank and shored up the wavering Turks. Without firing a shot on the ground, a united Europe had stopped war before it reached the Bosporus. That decisive and swift deployment had infused the continent with self-destructive pride. Their hubris had ultimately been their undoing. When three Chinese supercarriers had sailed north toward the Rock of Gibraltar, Europe’s emboldened navies had sailed south and deployed into the western Mediterranean. They had denied China passage and immediately celebrated victory… until the arrival of another ten Chinese supercarriers.
In perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in modern military history, the surviving remnants of Europe’s navies had been bottled up inside the Mediterranean. It was China’s third milestone on their decade-long route to America, although no one saw it that way at the time. Analysts hadn’t even known the names of the Chinese warships that had appeared on the horizon without any warning. Western “human intelligence” on the closed Korean peninsula had been reporting materials shortages and labor unrest, but it had been classic Chinese disinformation. The fanfare from Beijing upon commissioning of each new warship had masked the three ships built in between.
Europe had promptly launched spy satellites in violation of the international ban. All had been downed by Chinese missiles, but not before they had returned crisp photos of Korea’s bustling slave-labor shipyards. In real time, governments in Berlin, Paris, and London had gotten their first glimpse of another twenty supercarriers that were in various states of construction. The Sturm und Drang that ensued had left Europe in complete disarray. China had downed Europe’s civilian satellites in retaliation for their violation of the treaty demilitarizing space. The resulting fragmentation of Europe’s telecommunications system had been an omen of the disunity to follow.
The furious Britain — cut off from her fleet — had withdrawn from the EU. Their army trains had been jeered all the way from Turkey to the English Channel, but they had been cheered at the cliffs of Dover. The remaining European expeditionary force had been forced to withdraw behind the Bosporus, and Turkey had fallen south of Istanbul. The Germans had thought that the Chinese would now attack overland from Turkey or the Caucasus. But the French had been certain they would come from the sea into Iberia or directly into France. So Paris had recalled its troops to build a Western Wall along the Atlantic. The German army — left alone — had dug in deep and held its bloody Balkan ground, hemorrhaging daily in proxy wars with various Chinese-backed guerillas. In the month before Baker’s Republican presidential nomination, the EU had acrimoniously dissolved.
For Baker, the general election had been a single-issue race against a man whose Achilles’ heel was that issue. The Democratic nominee — Phillip Peller — had been vice president in the previous administration, which for eight years had chosen isolationism over containment. With withering overseas defense commitments, America’s need for weapons and troops had waned. Naval construction had slowed to a crawl. The fleet had shrunk from eleven to only seven aging aircraft carriers. While each was still a match for two or three Chinese supercarriers, on Election Day they were outnumbered four to one.
Baker and Elizabeth Sobo, his vice presidential running mate, had won the general election in a record landslide. A special air of excitement had surrounded the inauguration at which Baker had given a Reaganesque morning-in-America speech. Washington once again led an embattled Free World. The Dow — which had crashed with the collapse of international trade — had rocketed skyward as capital fled Europe for bastion America. The gush of spending in Baker’s doubled defense budget and the draft of the young had left Americans fully employed. Keels had hurriedly been laid for the three Reagan-class arsenal ships, and Atlantic blockade running was the talk of the day. Baker’s first order as commander in chief had been to prepare to send three carriers escorting a military supply convoy on a daring voyage to Great Britain.
But in the middle of the night one month into Bill’s presidency, he had been awakened to stunning news. China had attacked not north into Europe, but west into the Carribean. Chinese naval infantry had seized Barbados, Grenada, and St. Lucia. Bold plans for a rescue of Europe had given way to the grim task of defending America. An angry Congress had gutted the stunned CIA and vested intelligence-gathering in the FBI. After all, they had reasoned sarcastically, military intelligence would soon no longer be foreign!